Biography

Russell C Connor was born in Tennessee in 1979, but moved to Texas soon after. He showed an aptitude for writing at early age. His first works of fiction were composed in kindergarten, mostly sequels to his favorite movies. His father’s film preferences eventually turned his interests toward horror and suspense; movies such as Them!, The Exorcist, and The Evil Dead--coupled with the newly discovered writing of such authors as Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Robert McCammon--sealed his lifelong ambition.

He began his first serious attempts at fiction in high school, including his first unpublished novel--The DeviAToRS, the story of an evil, time-traveling government agency--and Hookman and the Accidents, a comic book about mutants who survive a nuclear war. While attending college at Texas Tech University, he wrote the short story that would eventually gain him his first professional publishing credit: “Restroom Break,” detailing one man’s encounter with a gremlin-like creature while using a public restroom.

It wasn't until he wrote the short story “Goggles,”--later published in Black Petals Magazine--that the major driving force behind his fiction became clear. The story, about a public school under attack from a psychopathic gunman wearing goggles over his eyes, became the basis for his novel Race the Night, and is the first instance where the Dark Filament is mentioned. This shadowy organization of evil and its frontline agents, called Incarnates, show up in several of Connor’s works, but other than the eradication of all children, their exact nature and goals remain unclear. The first volume in his post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy series The Dark Filament Ephemeris should answer some of these questions after its release in 2016.

Russell C. Connor's short fiction has since appeared in Alien Skin, Burial Day, Sanitarium, and Beware the Dark. He lives in Grand Prairie, TX with his mistress of the dark, demonspawn daughter, rabid dogs, and demented film collection, and has been a member of the DFW Writers' Workshop since 2006.